With the Supreme Court's new term now underway I was interested in exploring the cases on the docket relevant to our field. So far it appears that the docket is remarkably thin in terms of cases that relate to foreign relations, international law and/or comparative constitutionalism. Of course, it is possible and even likely that more interesting IL/IR...
[Opinio Juris note: Geoffrey Corn, a former Opinio Juris guest blogger who is a military law expert teaching at South Texas Law School, has sent along the following thoughts on the Military Commission Act.] It is by now apparent to most interested observers (and probably quite a few not so interested observers) that the Military Commission Act of 2006 has triggered...
Don't worry, this post is not about President Bush's authority to exercise "unreviewable statutory authority" in the war on terrorism. Rather, it is about how President Bush does get to exercise "unreviewable statutory authority" in the administration of U.S. trade laws. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Motion Systems v. Bush, a case challenging President Bush's...
As the only candidate to receive the approval of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon seems certain to become the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations. The pre-voting procedure of the Security Council involves a series of "straw polls" to indicate whether Security Council members encourage, discourage, or have no...
My vote for the most important international law case in the month of September is the ECJ decision in Commission v. Netherlands. The case is important in articulating the standard for the free movement of capital and affirming the protections guaranteed to foreign investors under the EC Treaty. It is another significant blow to government practices put in...
Peggy and I have both noted a subtle erosion in the Bush adminstration's opposition to the ICC. See, for example, here and here. That erosion continued today, as President Bush announced that he was using his authority under Section 2007 of the American Servicemembers Protection Act to permit the U.S. to resume military aid to 21 countries who...
I just came across the text of the statements by the military leaders of the coup in Thailand. I was dumbstruck by how, well, polite they were in terminating the Constitution and disbanding the government. Here is the money quote: "Now the Administrative Reform Group under the Democratic System with the King as the Head of State, comprising commanders...
I’d like to thank Chris, Peggy, Julian, Roger, Kevin, Duncan, and Peter for asking me to join Opinio Juris for the next two weeks as a guest blogger. Currently, I’m in Arusha, Tanzania, spending a month seconded to the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). (Standard disclaimers apply: the views expressed...
It’s bad enough that residents of Côte d’Ivoire face a continuing civil war with northern rebels, but now comes news of a massive environmental and health crisis in its capital city, Abidjan. Today’s New York Times details how a European-owned tanker’s waste water ended up being dumped in Abidjan suburbs, poisoning its residents. Eight have died and over...
Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome Christopher Le Mon as a guest blogger for the next two weeks. Christopher is currently on assignment at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. He served as a law clerk at the International Court of Justice to Judges Thomas Buergenthal and Vladlen S. Vereshchetin before joining Shearman & Sterling...
The Princeton Project on National Security released its final report last week, entitled Forging a World of Liberty Under Law: U.S. National Security in the 21st Century. Headed up by Anne-Marie Slaughter and John Ikenberry, the project involved more than 400 participants, the list of which reads like a who's who of the new (mostly Democrat) foreign policy establishment....
Here's a recent poll from the Hudson Institute on how Americans view the United Nations. Hudson predictably plays up the negative responses (e.g., 71% believe the UN "needs to be significantly reformed"). But most of those answers were given in response to what look like leading questions (e.g., do you agree with the statement, "[the UN] needs to...
